Newspaper in Spokane, Washington
America’s economic rebound is about to get a lot tougher after an initial series of gains from the depths of the pandemic. Applications for regular state unemployment benefits continue to number more than 800,000 each week and chances in Congress diminished for additional support for the jobless and businesses on Thursday. What’s more, funding for the temporary supplemental jobless benefit payments authorized by President Donald Trump in early August is running out.
The coronavirus pandemic has taken a harsh toll on the mental health of young Americans, according to a new poll that finds adults under 35 especially likely to report negative feelings or experience physical or emotional symptoms associated with stress and anxiety. A majority of Americans ages 18 through 34 – 56% – say they have at least sometimes felt isolated in the past month, compared with about 4 in 10 older Americans, according to the latest COVID Response Tracking Study conducted by NORC at the University of Chicago. Twenty-five percent of young adults rate their mental health as fair or poor, compared with 13% of older adults, while 56% of older adults say their mental health is excellent or very good, compared with just 39% of young adults.
In every state, the AP and Chalkbeat surveyed the largest school districts in each of four categories set by the National Center for Education Statistics: urban, suburban, town and rural. Survey responses from 677 school districts covering 13 million students found that most students will begin the school year online. That’s the case for the vast majority of the nation’s biggest districts, with the notable exception of New York City. But the survey shows that race is a strong predictor of which public schools are offering in-person instruction and which aren’t. The higher a district’s share of white students, the more likely it is to offer in-person instruction – a pattern that generally holds across cities, towns, suburbs and rural areas. Across the surveyed districts, 79% of Hispanic students, 75% of Black students, and 51% of white students won’t have the option of in-person learning.
Measures to slow the spread of the novel coronavirus brought an extra bonus to Seattle and King County: Reduced levels of respiratory infections of all types. A new analysis of results from the Seattle Coronavirus Assessment Network (SCAN) finds that the respiratory viruses responsible for everything from common colds to flu were much less prevalent this year than in 2019. “The undeniable contrast is almost certainly due to the COVID-19 control efforts,” says a blog post by researchers Gregory Hart and Mike Famulare of the Institute for Disease Modeling.
If political campaigns can be considered a Rorschach test on the boundaries of rhetoric, gubernatorial candidate Loren Culp offered a verbal “ink blot” last week that will almost certainly be viewed differently by his supporters than by Gov. Jay Inslee’s. Talking on Facebook Live, which is often the Republic police chief’s favored medium, Culp offered up a favorite quote on one of his favorite topics, limited government bounded by the Constitution: “Government is like fire. If it’s contained within your fireplace, then it can heat your home, provide comfort for your family … but if it gets outside the boundaries of your fireplace, it can consume your home, it can consume you, it can kill you and take everything you have.”
An attorney working for Stevens County Prosecutor Tim Rasmussen has roundly rejected a request to grant the county commissioners temporary immunity from gross misdemeanor charges, while the parties continue to dispute whether the commissioners can hold office. Rasmussen and his specially appointed deputy prosecutor, George Ahrend, contend the commissioners – Wes McCart, Steve Parker and Don Dashiell – lost their elected positions last month when a judge ruled against them and their bonding agencies, saying they had misspent more than $130,000 in taxpayer funds earmarked for homelessness assistance.
Firefighting crews working across the eastern portions of Washington and North Idaho continued battling invading smoke and rising temperatures Friday as they sought to extinguish blazes that have burned hundreds of thousands of acres since Monday. As of Friday morning, the state had 14 active large fires with 626,982 acres burned, Gov. Jay Inslee announced in a news conference Friday afternoon. About 5,000 people across the state have evacuated their homes. The Cold Springs fire near Omak has burned nearly 188,000 acres since igniting Sunday evening. The cause of the fire, which resulted in the death of a 1-year-old and sent his parents to the hospital with severe burns, remains under investigation. New mapping conducted in the past 24 hours has shown the Pearl Hill fire, which started after the Cold Springs fire jumped the Columbia River and burned southern portions of Douglas County near Bridgeport, is substantially larger than previously believed. The fire is believed to have burned nearly 220,000 acres of brush and tall grass in areas east of Bridgeport and Mansfield.
The possibility of an unresolved presidential election this fall giving way to a winter of uncertainty, chaos or even political violence has sent many Americans scurrying to the history books in search of a precedent. Never before has an incumbent president sought to hold onto power despite an apparent loss in his bid for reelection, as President Donald Trump has indicated he might. Yet there have on occasion been lingering doubts long after Election Day about who the winner actually was. Most recently, the 2000 election wasn’t resolved until mid-December, when five Republican-appointed justices on the Supreme Court put a stop to the recount of votes in Florida, thus handing the election to George W. Bush. But there is a more frightening example of a contested election: 1876. This deadlock came remarkably close to plunging the United States into another civil war, barely more than a decade after the close of the first one. It suggests that today we need not only fear potential violence but should also worry about what policies and principles even well-meaning political leaders might be willing to compromise on to avert it.
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